Before Advent

IN the introduction to her book of commentary, sermons, on the readings at Sunday masses for the liturgical cycle, the late Sr. Verna Holyhead noted that even then, in 2007, there were not enough ordained Roman Catholic priests to staff the churches and that if Catholics were going to hear the readings and hear sermons on them it would be from "nonordained" persons they were going to hear it from. Of course a lot of them would have to be the ones reading them and thinking about them.

That was in 2007 when the regrettable not only non-pastoral but anti-pastoral papacy of John Paul II had ended but his was taken up by the, if anything, even less pastoral papacy of Benedict XVI who had explicitly endorsed the idea of a shrinking Catholic church, one in which those kinds of Catholics he didn't like would leave or be pushed out for those he found to be more to his liking. Considering the abysmal record of the bishops and Cardinals he elevated within his conception of a soon-to-be purified Catholic church the quality of his kind of Catholic isn't particlarly Christian.

I am more convinced than I was when I first read the term that Karl Rahner's idea that the Christian religion of the present and future will be comparable to nature during winter, stripped to its essentials, not having the florid cultural and social trappings that are a remnant of what grew in the medieval period or other such times when Christianity was the default framing of thought. Or so it was supposed to be. Much that was dreadful about that form of medieval and later Christianity was hardly Christian to start with, the "most Christian" monarchs and other gangsters who held power, not a few of them bishops, cardinals and popes, honored the Gospel of Jesus entirely more as a cover story than in actual fact. That led, of course, to the reformation which, in turn, was corrupted in a similar way to the corrupt medieval, renaissance, baroque and later papacies with political power were.  There is little by way of historical Papal corruption that isn't on full display in American Protestantism in the age of Trump.   Though the right-wing of the Catholic hierarchy would love to bring all of that back to Catholicism, too.  It has long struck me as ironic that even with all of that corruption internally and the falling away from Christianity outside of it that within Christianity, even in Catholicism, there seems to be more of a sincere attempt to live up to the Gospel than any time I'm aware of.

I think Rahner's idea that a genuine Christianity would be without all of the clap-trap that was and is what most peoples' conception of Christianity was always the case. It was always winter, that is something that should have never come as a surprise to anyone, Jesus said he would not have a kingdom of this world, it should always have been a given that the kingdoms of this world, whether it be an empire or a local parish would not be where you could not expect to find the Gospel in its most unmitigated form, in its most reliable expression. Even in the letters of Paul we can see the machinations of politics in local house churches in settled locations creating problems and divisions.

The enforced de-churching of Christianity whether by parish closings or congregations being unable to sustain a church building or the paying of a pastor or though a pandemic will, of course, lead many people who might have been in the habit of going to church on Sundays not taking it up again. But it also is an opportunity to take responsibility to do it yourself. 

 

While I'm more than a little skeptical about the Christian nature of a huge amount of official Christianity (and have become even more skeptical about the "non-liturgical" form of Protestantism of late) a lot of the structure of things like the liturgy and the liturgical year can be useful if you use them as a motivation to encounter the Scriptures and think about what they say, learning about what we know and can reasonably discern about the contexts in which they were written and how they tie in with the tradition that inspired them and, most relevant to leading a life in line with the core of the Mosaic and Christian traditions, how we are to lead our lives to do to others as we would have them do unto us, the most exigent and sincere and literal worship of God. That is the point of trying to lead a Christian life, not adherence to some medieval or modern form or adhering to the Vatican's dictates on the liturgy or a voyeuristic precision meddling into our adult consenting sex lives, the kind of thing that led to the adoption and retaining of the celibate priesthood that, if the likes of that political hack Timothy Dolan have their way, may well more than decimate the ordained population of Catholics and a good many of those who choose to go to non-socially distanced masses as super-spreader events.

So, this is a big messy and too hastily written beginning to Advent here. I think it's likely to be a bumpy ride but, I hope, one that will keep us all thinking.